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An Eyewitness Account of Certification, From the Air and On the GroundMoments after take-off from Guatemala City, our small plane with its four seats, three passengers and two engines sailed smoothly over the mountain ridge that from the airport, loomed majestically in the distance. From the air, the forest in every direction was a rich kaleidoscope of greens. But clearly visible, too, were signs of environmental and economic despair -- large swatches of deforested land and abandoned coffee farms, silent reminders of the devastating effect that the global coffee crisis has wrought on Guatemala.
Today, the world coffee market suffers from oversupply, and coffee prices have plummeted as a result. Until recently, coffee was Guatemala's largest industry, but production has decreased drastically within the last three years, and Guatemala's share in world market has fallen by 30%. Even though Guatemala continues to produce high-grade beans, many farms have been forced to choose between operating at a loss while waiting for prices to recover, and closing. As a result, thousands of coffee workers have been left jobless, particularly in areas where there is little or no alternative work available. Unemployment and crime have soared, while a burgeoning population continues to exert intense pressure on the remaining forests. Our pilot, was Martin Keller, administrative manager of Santa Isabel, a mid-size Guatemalan company that was the second coffee plantation to be certified by the Rainforest Alliance. A fourth-generation Guatemalan of German extraction, his family established the coffee plantation in 1899. As he explained, even in the face of his country's problems, the RA coffee certification program is helping to encourage the remaining coffee farms to practice sustainable methods of agriculture, reduce waste and the use of pesticides, and to recycle. On sixty percent of Keller's 6,000-acre farm, coffee grows beneath the shade of the forest canopy. He has set aside the remaining 40% as a nature preserve. Unfortunately, Guatemala's economic and environmental problems are not restricted to coffee farms. In the northern Peten province, where in 1990 the government set aside a 1.6 million-acre biosphere reserve, immigrants from around the country arrive hoping to stake out small land holdings. Poverty and a lack of economic options has led to the uncontrolled exploitation of the Peten's great wealth of resources.
For help, the government has turned to local indigenous Maya communities-granting them lease rights for limited land use in the hopes that ownership will encourage careful resource management. Remarkably enough, the strategy is working, particularly because government leases require that these forestry operations be certified by an outside party --in this case the Rainforest Alliance's SmartWood program. Not only are the communities harvesting timber judiciously, taking only one tree every 25 years from each hectare (2 1/2 acres), but they are developing small tourism and furniture-building businesses, as well as harvesting the leaves from local plants for export. In Uaxactun (pronounced 'wa-shuck-toon'), located about 25 miles due north from of the ancient Maya city of Tikal, some 150 families live amidst 500 square miles of dark, dense forest. I was particularly keen to see their furniture making enterprise, since the RA had provided a grant used to construct the workshop building and buy the tools. Inside a modest one-story, thatched roof, cement structure, I found a group of boys, ages 8-14, learning to make simple, chairs, couches and tables. Not only are the children helping to build the furniture, they are sharing in the profits -- earnings which can go a long way towards helping to support their families. To see the impact that one small grant can have on a local community, and that one committed coffee farmer can have on 6,000 acres of ever-precious forest, is truly inspiring. It really does only take a village. -- Labeeb Abboud, Vice Chair, Rainforest Alliance Board of Directors
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